One man's war against decorative pillows

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I often think about what kind of counseling my wife and I would go to if we didn't get along fantastically. I'd definitely want one of those therapists who works with puppets, where each person gets to put a sock thing on their hand and use it to say what the other partner might say. I think I'd be good at this. I wish we could win some free counseling in a school raffle or something just so we could try it out.

Evil comes in many styles and colors.

beddingstyle.com

Evil comes in many styles and colors.

The first item on the agenda during Puppet Therapy is going to be our decorative pillows. You can look at this as a tribute to our relationship -- that the primary source of friction is the number of useless pillows we pile on the bed every morning, and remove every night. Or you can see it as my extreme hatred of unnecessary labor. Either way, I'm officially declaring war against the decorative pillow. This is my cause.

When I was still in the dating pool, I was always eager to check out potential partners' rooms -- not for perv-y reasons, but to see how many decorative pillows were piled on the bed. If she had two normal pillows and two decorative pillows, I figured I was dealing with someone who is relatively low maintenance. She's going to be able to get ready for the day in less than 20 minutes, and won't freak out if I want to go to my friend's bachelor party. And if she was one of those Type A dates who piled up dozens of decorative pillow in multiple waves all the way to the foot of the bed, I would excuse myself to go to the bathroom (which inevitably had a small pyramid of decorative soap) and sneak out the window.

My chief complaint about decorative pillows isn't the look, which I find sort of pleasant. It's the incredible waste of time involved. I recently timed myself dealing with our decorative pillows, and made the following calculations:

We currently have eight decorative pillows on our bed. This does not include my "World's Greatest Husband" pillow, which was sent to me at work during a movie promotion, and definitely stays. It takes 13 seconds to throw these decorative pillows off the bed at night, and 42 seconds to find them and pile them on the bed again in the morning. Next, I looked at the Social Security Administration actuary tables, which tell me that as a 39-year-old male, I have 38.52 years to live. (Damn. My life's more than half over? That's going to be another topic for Puppet Therapy ...)

So here's my math: (((13 + 42) x 365) x 38.52) /60 /60 /24 = 8.95 days we will spend during the rest of our lifetime screwing around with decorative pillows.

Almost nine days! Do you have any idea what one can accomplish in nine days? I think Jimmy Carter could build an entire city in nine days. A person could hand out hundreds of thousands of meals at a soup kitchen in nine days. Or, more realistically in my case, I could watch the original "Star Wars" trilogy 37 times.

The one in the front stays.

The one in the front stays.

There is one huge obstacle in my current war against decorative pillows: Technically I purchased the ones that are on our bed. When she unwrapped the present last Christmas, I told my wife this was a Gift of the Magi type of thing. My love for her transcends my hatred for decorative pillows. In reality, when they were crammed in the plastic bag with a comforter and duvet cover, I thought there were four pillows max. When we opened the bag, it was like one of those little sponge dinosaurs that expands to 10 times its size when you add water. I also enlisted the help of my mother-in-law during the shopping trip, and I suspect she might have administered some sort of Jedi mind trick on me at Macy's, and then snuck in some extra pillows.

(I realize these are crap excuses, and the hypocrisy here is kind of like when environmental advocate Gavin Newsom profited from the company that owns the deepwater rig at the center of the gulf oil disaster. So I'll use his approximate reasoning in my defense: Please judge me by my words, not my actions.)

I won't be buying another comforter set soon, mostly because I'm pretty cheap that way. I'm also worried that I might have to repaint the room. But I do have a 35-year plan, where I buy a new comforter set every five years, taking one decorative pillow away each time so no one notices. By the year 2045, we will be sleeping on a bare mattress. And I will have won.

Are you a member of the decorative pillow mafia? Or are you ready to join me in my efforts to eradicate the world of pointless cushions?

Your ad hominem attacks in the comments ...

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub.

Posted By: Peter Hartlaub (Email, Twitter) | July 02 2010 at 10:32 AM

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